William Wycherley Quotations

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

Next to the pleasure of finding a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one.

Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

I have heard people eat most heartily of another man's meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

Bluster, sputter, question, cavil; but be sure your argument be intricate enough to confound the court.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?

I have been toiling and moiling for the prettiest piece of china, my dear.

Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.

Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.

Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.

As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action.

Wit has as few true judges as painting.

Have as much good nature as good sense since they generally are companions.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be/Yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse, gathers together more gazers than if it shined out.

But methings wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with 'em.

A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself.

Necessity, mother of invention.

He's a fool that marries; but he's a greater fool that does not marry a fool.

I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone.

Poetry in love is no more to be avoided than jealousy.

Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

Temperance is the nurse of chastity.

With faint praises one another damn.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

Money makes up in a measure all other wants in men.